[ister]

If you have a bard you can max out skills at 90% because you'll have access to the song that adds 10% to all thieving skills soon enough.

Also the spell "Cat's Grace" will add another 10% to all thieving skills.

I son't think open locks is such an important skill. Most locks can be bashed by a fighter, and if you memorize one strength spell you can almost always bump the strength up enough to get into the chest. And the great thing about opening locks is you can always follow Robert the Bruce, try, try and try again.

If I'm doing a T-M dual I'd push everything into find locks (because I often can't be bothered to change songs all the time), and put most of the rest into stealth. Sure invisibility can substitute and allows you to look for traps, but stealth is still handy, and lots of items increase it.

And for a thief dual Orrick has a nice item to increase lock-pick and trap finding skills. Worthless to a SC or MC thief of course.